Today, Alesha Dixon launches her first childrenswear collection exclusively for George at Asda, featuring 34 bold, uplifting and gender-fluid pieces for boys and girls from 2 – 10 years old. The range is available online and in selected stores. We caught up with Alesha - mother to daughters Azura and Anaya - ahead of the launch...
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How fun was it to work on your own kids clothes collection?
It’s a dream – any time you get to work on anything to do with kids, it’s always so much fun. I got to experience that with my books – you can let your imagination run wild and everything’s more playful. This has been the best project I’ve had during lockdown because any time there’s a meeting, it’s a good one. We always have fun with fashion in this house and I’ve tried to get Azura involved as much as possible – she’s loved every minute of it too.
How involved was Azura?
I want her to feel like her opinion matters, so if there are three or four different accessories and we can only choose one, I might say, ‘Which one of these bags would you genuinely want to rock?’ Always her opinion is different to mine, which is a good thing. Because actually as parents we tend to dictate what our kids are going to wear and what they’re going to look like, so I love the fact she has an opinion on what she wants. It’s a funny little battle we have a lot where I’ll pull out an outfit and she’s like, ‘No mummy, I’m going to rock it with this and…’ And I think the fact she has a strong opinion about it, go for it.
And she models some of the collection too...
She’s never done a photo shoot before – she knows this world a little bit, but she’d never been in front of the camera before so I didn’t know how she was going to respond. But we made sure it was fun – good music, mummy and daddy were there, cousins were there modelling as well – so to her it was one amazing playdate. And obviously having been in lockdown, she was like, ‘This is great!’
What things do only mums understand that you need with kids’ clothing?
When I wear clothing to go out, I’m not always comfortable. I have to say the older I get, I’m like, ‘If it’s not comfortable, I’m not wearing it’. But there have been many occasions in my adult life where I’ve sacrificed being comfortable to wear something I like. I won’t do that for my kids. It’s, is it loose fitting? Is it comfortable, stretchy, cosy? That’s all I care about. My kids never wore jeans when they were little, unless it’s a stretchy legging that looks like a jean. Can they play in it and will they be comfortable are the first two priorities. Then, do I like it. Do I like the colours? Do I like what it’s saying? Will it suit their personalites?
How important was it for them to be reasonably priced?
This is what’s blown my mind – the fact they’re so reasonably priced and the quality is beautiful. I have been guilty of spending more than I probably should on children’s clothing. What George are proving to me is that it’s not the price, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on children’s clothing to get great quality clothes. The design team are phenomenal – they have so many clothes with different identities and this is very different to anything they’ve done. I’ve been so impressed by each step.
Because, eventually, they’re just going to jump in a muddy puddle, right?
100 per cent! My 19-month-old she heads straight for the puddle!
The clothes are gender-fluid and unisex – why did you decide on that?
Growing up, I remember I was always put in pink and my brother was put in blue – I liked blue! My daughter Anaya, is obsessed with blue. My daughter Azura isn’t really a pink girl. So it was thinking about children should be allowed freedom of choice when it comes to styles and colours. I just thought it’d be cool to have a collection that’s unisex. That to me was a little but more exciting and felt more now. It’s moving with the times and I think the brands have to move with it.
There’s lots of nice slogans involved – why did you want that to be a feature?
The main mantra – be strong, be brave, be kind and have fun is something I’ve been saying to Azura every day she goes to school, since she started nursery when she was three years old. I don’t know how it started – we were watching something about a father who does affirmations every day with his children and I just tried it one morning in the bathroom doing her hair. I thought, if I can just say something really positive to her every day, hopefully it’ll worm its way into her psyche and remembers what mummy is telling her. I think those aspects are really important. To be strong and brave, speaking up. But also kindness, that’s all you want your child to be – we want them to have fun above everything. I just thought wouldn’t it be cool if that was the identity of the collection? Woven within that there’s other messages like Shine Bright, Stand Out, which came from my children’s books which is about not being afraid to be different. Then also some things connected to our personality – we always use the word steez, I’ve got pandas in there for Anaya.
How tempting is it to say you’d also like some matching adult versions?
It wasn’t until the photo shoot I suddenly thought, ‘Why didn’t I get an adult version of this tracksuit? Or this jumpsuit’ Who knows, maybe one day in the future… I like trying to match the girls – I don’t know how Azura would feel about dressing the same as me. She might be open to it… I love putting them in similar things and I love passing down Azura’s clothes and putting them on Anaya, that was sweet, I loved doing that.
How have you found parenting over the last year through the pandemic?
I feel very grateful for the quality time I’ve had with the girls, because my job does tend to take me here, there are everywhere. That quality time was invaluable. First lockdown I was pulling my hair out, because I had a baby that was still waking up in the middle of the night, a house to clean, a kitchen to run and a six-year-old happy about homeschooling. But my partner and I were really good, we had a nice tag team system going on – I’d sleep in the spare room and get up with the baby, he’d get up and do the homeschooling and then we’d switch. It was tough – honestly I was sick of cleaning bathrooms and toilets. But there was no other choice and you think the only way we’re going to get through it is to try and laugh our way through this – and that’s what we did. Thankfully, my partner and I, we were a team. So come the next lockdown, we were like, ‘Oh we got this!’ I wasn’t easy because come the next lockdown I had a toddler that was running around everywhere, but the good news was she was sleeping, we weren’t as exhausted and Azura got into the swing of it as well. She accepted it and we made sure she had regular Zooms with her mates. We just got on with it and tried to focus on the positives rather than the negatives. Obviously there was so much sadness going on in the world, so all we could do in our little bubble was to keep it as fun for the girls as possible, a happy face, so hopefully in years to come, when Azura looks back, she’ll remember the good stuff, rather than any of the craziness that was going on outside our four walls.
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